Geoffrey Lean is Britain's longest-serving environmental correspondent, having pioneered reporting on the subject almost 40 years ago.

Conservative party conference: Tories rethink energy strategy

In Manchester at the Conservative party conference to find something rather revolutionary is happening in the Tories' thinking on energy; they are beginning to discover limitations in the pioneering liberalised energy market set up in the heyday both of Mrs Thatcher and of North sea oil and gas.

It worked well, they say,when Britain was exporting the fuels and in the days before climate change became a major concern, but now big cracks are appearing in the structure. For a start the country ends up paying much more for, say, imported liquified natural gas because it ends up paying for it on the spot market as it cannot plan ahead as far as the more statist arrangements in other European countries. And, the Tories are increasingly realising, the market alone will not deliver low carbon energy.

They still baulk at the concept of interventionism, but are now saying that a Tory Government will have to draw up an energy strategy rather than leaving it all to the market.